but…

Blogger Pateis concerned of being sued by IBM after reading a book from IBM Press. Page xix from the book “Mining the Talk” reads:

if you want to take our methods and create your own software solution to sell as a product, while we applaud your initiative and enthusiasm, you really should first discuss this with suitable representatives from IBM business development. IBM has sole ownership of all the intellectual property described in this book, all of which is protected by U.S. patents, both granted and pending. All rights reserved, etc., etc.

The security flaws inherent in Sony BMG’s DRM left users open to attack, and the DRM collected data about users’ private activities without proper disclosure. […] The rootkit incident threatened both the security of the network infrastructure and the future of DRM technology.

[…]

The outcry from fans, artists, and consumer advocates alike gave rise to a palpable shift in the public perception of Sony BMG and its parent corporations.

By dramatically increasing public awareness of the restrictions on access and copying imposed by DRM technologies, while simultaneously corroding consumer confidence in their safety, the rootkit incident likely undermined the significant investments of both content providers and protection measure vendors in such technology. In the wake of the rootkit fiasco, major labels abandoned the use of DRM on CDs,91 and leading protection measure vendors ceased development of new CD-based DRM systems.

The Old New Thing is a blog focused on Win32 UI development and related topics. This article warns about a registry key called AppInit_DLLs which seems to have lost its original purpose and became a vector for malware instead. Some of the comments refer to “Program A” and “Program B”. A is actually Google Desktop, B is WindowBlinds. They both suck but I’d classify the latter as an actual instance of malware; It’s advertised as “safe”, “compatible”, “reliable”(!) and “more secure”(?!) but it’s none of that. Ofcourse, marketing generally works by taking the biggest downside and turning it into a huge selling point. E.g. “comfortable flying” or “eco-friendly car”.

At the time of writing, www.userfriendly.org is unreachable. As you can see with traceroute, it seems a router along the way has failed. The IP address of the website is 66.96.16.214, but a larger range of 66.96.16.212-216 seems to be unresponsive. The network is owned by EI Catalyst, but earlier today a router from Server North on the same network showed up in the trace as well:

Actually, forget the above! While investigating the matter, User Friendly came back online on a different server. Quote:

Main UF server hosting both www and ars is currently down. This is a replacement server. ARS is still down, so the usual archive viewing will not work today. When we get that system back on its feet we’ll update you.

So much thanks to Yohimbe, because todays UF is brilliant.

UPDATE: The downtime was caused by a hardware failure in the server:

We’ve just replaced our main server. Helpfully we’d been planning this for a while. Our hand was forced by an unexplained failure on the previous hardware. We just changed the schedule. The new hardware is more reliable and faster.